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• Social Security Isn't Security.• Food is more crucial to life than healthcare: learn from that.• Financial regulators give corporate welfare.• Stimulus best case: like giving sick patients a stimulant to party, worse afterwards. Likely: Pork.

About Politics Debunked

Debunking political nonsense and urban myths. Common Sense for the 21st century. The public needs to be better informed about the games politicians play. Journalists are often not experts in the topics they cover. Their
specialty is communicating well. That does no good if they don't
understand the topic they are communicating about.

The main web page site will be updated with major current and
timeless myths. The blog may address more minor and time relevant
issues. Check the YouTube channel, or the list of videos in the tab above, for videos created by Politics Debunked.

Email: you can try sending to the username "contact" at this domain, but there is no guarantee time will be found to read or respond. (a tip receipt may make it more likely..).

There is a need to spread information to help people understand how politics really works rather than wishful thinking that any program that claims to be for the common good is in their best interest . Politicians often push policies that benefit special interest groups, or feed their own desire for power, while pretending to act in the public's interest.

"Politics is about concentrating benefits on well-organized and well-informed interest groups, and dispersing costs on the unorganized and ill-informed masses."

“much of modern politics can be understood as rent-seeking activity. Pork-barrel politics is only the most obvious example. Much of the growth of the bureaucratic or regulatory sector of government can best be explained in terms of the competition between political agents for constituency support through the use of promises of discriminatory transfers of wealth."

"Lincoln would now see government not of, by, and for all the people but of, by, and for some kinds of people...And he would see government not as for the ordinary people but as for
the organized in well-run, well-financed, and influential business
organizations, professional associations, and trade unions. It is
government “of the Busy (political activists), by the Bossy (government
managers), for the Bully (lobbying activists).”

"as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit"

Often what happens is a teaming of what economists call "Bootleggers and Baptists". That is named after the unlikely pairing of two groups that pushed for alcohol prohibition. Bootleggers wanted to make money off it and got their way by teaming with baptists who portrayed the policy as being for the common good. Those who profit from regulations benefit from duping others into thinking regulations that benefit them are for the public's best interest.

It makes sense that often policy would be determined by special interest groups since the government often hears mostly from their side. The general public simply doesn't have the time or motivation to fight them since they are busy with their own lives. There are large numbers of special interest groups that gain enough benefits from government that they are motivated to fly to DC to lobby. The cost of favors for any particular special interest group are spread among hundreds of millions of people. A group getting a $50 million in benefits from the government may cost a voter less than a dollar, obviously not worth the trouble to DC to lobby against it.

"Many studies show that most people are not financially literate and are unfamiliar with even the most basic economic concepts.."

so politicians take advantage of this. They realize that many people aren't aware of how little they do know about the topic. The author has posted on different newspaper sites around the country (prior residences and politically interested communities), to get an idea of the common misconceptions.

This site has just begun, so please stay tuned and be patient if
there are gaps in updates. Although the generic phrase "this site" is
used at times to allow for future authors, it is currently a solo
project. The site is created by an entrepreneur doing initial bootstrap
product
development who is concerned about this country so is taking some
time for it on the side (sleep is overrated :-) ). The author can't
afford to take much time unless
tips begin to appear to fund e.g. ramen purchases :-) or more paying
gigs will need to be taken which may not leave time for this. People
will pay
for hardcopy publications that ignore problems, contribute to
politicians who help create problems, and tip waitresses they'll never
see again for drinks to forget this country's problems. Yet they
hesitate to tip to see useful internet content produced. They'll give $millions
to get a cult TV show made into a movie, while a non-fiction site would
be thankful for enough to buy a movie ticket . T-shirts and other items
may be added in the future, time permitting.